50’s / 60’s

The recent commercialized nostalgia for the period has highlighted some of the reasons why it was apparently better - but not the main one: benefitting from pre-manipulation while gaining organic American stimulus from its film and pop, where leftists and Blacks played crucial roles.

From a physical point of view there was a much greater sense of emptiness in the 50’s, with bomb-damage all over London, including a huge crater in the middle of Bond St and large parts of the City open wastelands... at the same time the breaking down of established business structures and the arrival of many thousands of European refugees, in the West End alone, meant every kind of small business was trying its luck alongside the stolid British ones - a great sense of amateurism was prevalent and in this the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Dover St. was no exception. It too was roped into the promotion of Modernism but via Roland Penrose, and tentative Surrealist and old friend of Picasso, there was a penchant towards the activities of the Continental avant-garde - balanced by the presence of Alloway as a director. Penrose was a patron of private wealth. The ICA produced some interesting cross-breeds - people torn between the two poles: Europe or America. On a mix of aesthetic and practical grounds people were always looking beyond London, since it was still very limited in its quality of social leadership. The bulk of the establishment leaving people to their fate with total indifference. So apart from art teaching the places where modernism was more accepted acted like a magnet.

As an art student politics didn’t exist as a subject of conversation or pre-occupation, We belonged to a class which didn’t interest the kind of elites which were scanning Oxbridge for future leaders. In those recent post-war days you could get into art school with nil qualifications - and that was no bad thing ; all classes mixed without any problem because daily we had to tackle quite difficult tasks alone in which every aspect involved independent decision-making. Yet as a University girlfriend I was doubtless seen as a dumb art-student - the language of the visual was never seen as something valid and apart as it is on the Continent. From my first days of art school one was thrust into a weekly figurative composition which was critized before the entire first and second year group by the principal, who could be pretty caustic - this ritual was on Mondays. Two full days a week were spent life-drawing another on sculpture. Hence much time was spent in studying the Renaissance solutions to drawing and composition as well as later big figures (and some UK modern figuration). Some entered deeply into the past and other forms of thinking... those who had the ability to do so.

Nearby West-End galleries showed modernists of quite a wide variety but far from comprehensively ; later I made numerous short trips to the Continent to see things we didn’t find in London and meet quite a few of the still-living pioneer avant-gardists. That was mostly in the 60’s but some earlier - not many did that but our constructivist group was deeply-rooted in Continental thinking. We would have been able to open up avenues of exchange and patronage had not the US juggernaut shut down chances of that developing organically. People used to think it was temporary and that the old balance would be perceived as better but of course that consideration was of no consequence, except to those who knew the most.

Looking back I’m sure the University students of the day would have been dumb-founded to know that from our ranks would come the future biggest earners (pop) and a slew of lasting big-names via Swinging London and the policy of big-ticket art works...